Many telecommunications customers choose to pay for their service through the establishment of a prepaid service account. This account maintains a balance of the amount of telecommunications services either in units or in dollars that a customer has in his/her account and can use for telecommunications services. In general, the account can be replenished via a call in which the customer supplies a credit or debit card number and the amount to be added to his/her account or the account can be replenished through the use of “scratch” cards purchased from vendors and communicated by the customer to the telecommunications service provider. Some retailers also provide a service whereby the customer pays a retailer and the retailer purchases telecommunications services provider for the customer. Scratch cards or retailer purchased services offer the possibility of promotions wherein the balance added to a customer's account exceeds the amount that the customer pays to the scratch card vendor or the retailer. Some customers use a service wherein they provide a credit or debit card number to the service provider and the service provider automatically replenishes the account when the account goes below a threshold.
However, many customers prefer to have a more active role in controlling their accounts. For these latter customers, provisions are made to notify them through a voice or data message that their account is below some threshold so that they can arrange to add to their account before service is denied.
A problem of the prior art is that after a customer's balance goes below a threshold, the notification systems cause a notification message to be sent to the customer on every call. If the calls are short message service (SMS) calls, these frequent notifications can become annoying to the customer and can lead to complaints to the service provider; these complaints are very expensive to process.